Historically, companies viewed the database as a necessary, but not very interesting tool. A glorified filing cabinet at best and something that business leadership gave as much thought to as the coffee machine – a utility that simply worked, or was occasionally annoying when it didn’t. Something that, for most of its history, was someone else’s job to worry about. But times have changed, and there’s a new, golden age of database administration that lies ahead.
Data is everywhere now, thanks to companies using artificial intelligence, machine learning and relational databases, which are the workhorse of the data landscape. And it’s all growing exponentially. For many organizations, the database is quickly becoming their most important asset and increasingly getting the attention of the boardroom, not just the backroom. Its value stems from the insights a company can glean from it. It helps to illustrate what they can do more of to support their existing customers and users with the products and services offered. It also sparks ideas for future innovations. It’s a wealth of important information.
Accessing the promise and opportunity that data holds, however, is getting harder because the average IT specialist or database administrator (DBA) faces an increasingly demanding daily workload. Add to this a shortage of skilled labor, and companies are facing an uphill battle to truly make the most of the rich, treasure of data they have.
Without taking the appropriate measures and putting the right tools in place today to support data professionals, companies can expect to see value lost, dollars left on the table and innovation slowed. But, there is an answer. By improving the quality of your code, automating database processes, and a clear handle on your monitoring, businesses can unlock tremendous value, and reduce human and opportunity costs. Productivity tools give Software Engineers insights into the dark arts of writing clean, performant SQL code. Streamlined, automated deployments minimize the risk of errors and downtime, enabling a faster pace of development and innovation. Sophisticated monitoring tools provide proactive capabilities to enhance operational efficiency, and boost employee engagement and retention, empowering a more dynamic and motivated workforce.
Database Monitoring: The Right Tool for the Right Job
Understanding what’s happening across your database estate is critically important, and for many companies, their estate sprawls across data centers, clouds, and over multiple database types. Our recent State of the Database Landscape report shows that at least 74% of companies are using more than one database platform. That makes each environment complex and relatively unique. This adds to the pressure on data professionals who are already working at capacity.
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There is a plethora of options for addressing this complexity, but there really is no substitute for getting specific database monitoring solutions in place. These should exhibit advanced capabilities while also being intuitive and easy to navigate. Combining ingeniously simple with the depth of functionality that DBAs expect requires experience that is can be expected from mature vendors. DBAs don’t want to be clicking through several layers of UI in response to alerts. They need everything in a single pane of glass. In addition, enterprises are expecting security features to audit and control access to this critical infrastructure and APIs which allow data extraction and integration with other DevOps tools.
Increasingly, there is an opportunity for AI to help identify the signal in the noise and tools can start learning what really is important and what the DBA should pay attention to as opposed to what’s within normal tolerances. Nobody wants to get hauled out of bed for no reason. And when something is going wrong, how quickly can you identify the cause? Is it hardware-related or was there a recent change or has the underlying data caused some instability? DBAs need to get to the root cause quickly because downtime has a business impact.
Automation and the Promise of AI
Consistency and standardization in your environments ensure greater efficiency and allow for more predictable tasks. When used together, they form the basis for automation and the use of machine learning or artificial intelligence. Automation is indispensable in database management these days and that will continue on into 2025. This is especially true when it comes to repetitive tasks such as installing, maintaining and patching large quantities of servers and databases; automation shows its great advantages and ensures significant time savings. DBAs can then turn their attention to more valuable tasks, such as database tuning and supporting software engineers to get the most out of their relational database management systems.
Like so many other areas, database monitoring is seeing the addition of AI capabilities. “Smart” suggestions for next actions and “intelligent” alerts for getting to issues quickly are all part of the promise toward greater efficiency. The countervailing forces of a lack of trust and a struggle to incorporate these tools into existing workflows mean the jury is still out on how best to use these tools. Our current generation of tools can be “usefully wrong,” and in the monitoring context, we intuitively need them to be right, consistently, hence the slow adoption. Adapting workflows and thinking about problems differently will allow these tools to find their home.
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Databases: Because that’s where the data is
To paraphrase the apocryphal quote from the bank robber Willie Sutton, our databases are the target of attack because that’s where the data (or value) is. Our databases and infrastructure are under constant cyber-attack because there is an opportunity for criminals to make money through ransomware attacks or at least cause regulatory and reputational trouble by stealing and corrupting our data. Being constantly vigilant of who is accessing that data, knowing when it’s being accessed inappropriately and having capabilities in place to recover are all part of the defenses against these attacks. There are also opportunities to be proactive about security, for example through rebuilding databases regularly or ensuring that immutable back-ups are stored in a break-glass environment are investments worth making.
Good database monitoring is part of that strength in depth that allows us to sleep at night. Showing where databases don’t conform to company policies and industry standards such as the Center for Internet Security (CIS) benchmarks allows DBAs to quickly plug gaps. It also goes a long way to ensuring compliance with external certifications such as ISO27001 or SOC 2. Being able to audit access and tie Joiners/Movers/Leavers (JML) processes into the tooling gives you confidence that you know who is accessing what and that access evolves as the personnel change.
The Changing Database Landscape
Over the past two decades, the role of the data professional has changed. From what was originally a focus on stability and performance, it now requires flexibility and a broad skillset, on top of ever-present demands for security and reliability. Databases are constantly being changed to meet the needs of customers and maintenance demands. These changes reflect the competitive advantage of being responsive to those forces. This only serves to increase the volume and importance of data. And with the increasing options available to companies for storing and managing it, database experts are in greater demand than ever before – and the trend will continue.
